


Saying Things Will Get Better Doesn't Make Me Feel Better

by ColorWithMarker



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst, Background Relationships, Break Up, Coping, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 12:58:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8328844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColorWithMarker/pseuds/ColorWithMarker
Summary: It's not fair that he gets to move on and find someone else to make him smile and feel human again.





	

Sharon didn’t realize she hadn’t showered in over a week. She barely recognized the hints that Natasha was dropping every day as she put another plate on the bedside table. Her phone had died four days ago, and she couldn’t muster the strength to find a charger. In fact, she doesn’t remember moving from the bed much recently. Her mind was buzzing so much that she would hardly register the times in between being awake and asleep, no matter the random hours those waking moments occurred.

It’s Sam who Tony and Natasha finally call over to get her off her ass and into the bathroom. She complies when Natasha rolls her eyes and attempts to undress her. They stood outside the bathroom door when she was finished bathing, standing around with her hair soaked and dripping all over the white tiles, clothed in Tony’s bathrobe. She promises that she can get dressed by herself, thank you very much.

She hears Tony rambling in the living room about how hard he’s going to kick _his_ ass, with Sam trying to reason with him, and Natasha saying that Tony would get his own ass kicked after the second hit. She can’t think about how easily Tony would be taken down in that fight, because then she would think of _him,_ and she would put herself in Tony’s place and feel _his_ fists striking her face. That wouldn’t hurt nearly as much as the pain she was in now.

She locks the door, props her chair against it, pushes boxes around the chair, then lays back down.

* * *

 

Maria’s the one who gets Sharon out of the room, by breaking in through the window. Sharon remembers years ago showing that trick to her, and saying that it only worked on the one window because it was different from all the others. Someone must have told her that Sharon holed herself up, and Maria was the best at climbing the oak tree outside her window.

She pulls Sharon up and moves everything from the door.

Maria is on the list of the last people she wants to see right now – not at the bottom like _he_ is, but close to it. Thinking of her is a remembrance of _him_ , though the break-up they’d gone through was nowhere near as traumatic.

But Maria takes her to a Five Guys, sits her in her favorite corner table, and brings over a burger with all her favorite toppings, and the perfect amount of salt on her fries, and no ice in her root beer. For an hour, Sharon could pretend that she was seventeen again, and taking over the weekends with Maria again. Running the beaches. Dedicating booths at restaurants to themselves. Having special meals, desserts, and songs. The corny mix CD they made together.

She throws up her dinner in the middle of the night, after having a vivid dream of _him_ kissing her neck and whispering all those fake promises about how they’ll be together forever.

* * *

 

Tony asks if maybe she should get a job to make herself feel better. Distract herself from, well, herself. Get out of the house and get used to normal day-to-day interaction. Like he’s not rich out the ass, and like he wouldn’t provide for her even if she did nothing ever again for the rest of her life.

She tells him to go fuck himself, then apologizes several times. Tony nods and walks away. Sharon hates herself for being like this, but at the same time, she knows he knew his attempts would turn up fruitless. He honestly shouldn’t have bothered, but it’s the thought that counts.

* * *

 

Every dream about _him_ makes everything worse for her. It makes her want to stay up longer, but she doesn’t have the strength to go more than four hours awake. Trying to push further drains her completely.

* * *

 

She sees Clint at the convenient store in the middle of the night, and he tries to be subtle about avoiding her at all costs once they make eye contact.

Sharon knows she should expect people not to want to stay friends with her. There’s eventually going to be a past-mutual friend who’s going to pick and choose sides. Of course, she doesn’t expect it to be Clint of all people, but that’s the point of this, isn’t it?

Now that she thinks of it, Wanda and Pietro haven’t reached out to her in a while. The list of names grows. There’s no way they’re unaware of the situation. But at the same time, she has Tony and Maria fully on her side, and to some extent, Natasha too.

She looks down at the food in her hand and decides to put it all back. She feels Clint staring at her as she rushes back to her car.

When Natasha asks if she saw him last night, Sharon pretends to know nothing, and knows she’s far from convincing about it.

* * *

 

Natasha is the one who cleans up all the broken glass and splintered picture frames.

Sharon found the shoebox under the bed of all the pictures she was allowed to keep from the apartment. She threw them all against the wall. Every last one. Watching them break didn’t make her feel better, but the anger was resting within her for so long that she needed to channel it out somehow.

Sam takes the pictures, both the unkempt and non-creased, and says he’ll keep them. He won’t put them out, but in his own picture boxes.

She wishes she could be strong like Sam, but Sam didn’t have to go through what she had. He was the best friend who swore up and down he never saw it coming, and refused to pick sides.

She wonders how long ago he hung out with _him_. They were close still, from what she’s heard. Natasha gets her updates through Sam about all the other friends lost in the break-up. Natasha felt obligated to choose sides. So did Tony.

She misses Bucky. She hasn’t seen him in a few months. She doesn’t think she’ll see him again on purpose.

But he’s in her phone, and Maria had charged it without her knowing until two days ago. And Bucky wouldn’t say no to her at a time like this, no matter how strong the friendship he and _him_ have.

* * *

 

All the anger, rage, sadness, and conglomeration of emotions that she’d been bottling up ever since that horrible night came out in six minutes of pure revenge fucking.

She knows _he_ has been moving between Sam and Bucky’s places, and based on the timetables from what she gathered from overhearing Sam, _he_ would be back tomorrow afternoon.

When _he_ walks in, she wants _him_ to see the intense scratch she leaves on Bucky’s back – three long red marks from her pinky, ring, and middle fingers. The paint that chipped off the wall from the bed bouncing and rubbing against it. The underwear she purposefully drops on the floor, almost hidden under Bucky’s bed, that _he_ would recognize and use to put two and two together. And if _he_ comes running to her because of it, she hopes _he_ sees the fingerprints on her wrist from being held, the same ones that has Tony and Natasha raising eyebrows when she limps back through the front door.

It’s rough. It’s nasty. It’s nothing that Sharon and Bucky are separate and never were together, but she needed this to be a thing. She needs _him_ to be hurt, because she can’t be the only one who suffers through this trying time. She needs _him_ to suffer with her, or else this would be all for nothing.

Bucky doesn’t say anything when she redresses immediately. She doesn’t make eye contact with the picture on the desk from years ago, of two little boys, all missing-tooth smiles at Halloween done up as zombies, because even as a child, she can’t stand _his_ smile.

* * *

 

When Sharon and Maria broke up, they didn’t have a reason. They just both felt that their time together had come to a close, and though neither wanted to do it, they knew that they had to. There was no point in keeping up something that had lost the spark and the more-than-friends love that they had slowly been reverting back too. It wasn’t painless, but it was easy to buddy up on projects senior year and share the same circle of friends.

She doesn’t remember them even having problems. They were happy one day, then unhappy the next. No fighting or screaming till they were blue in the face. No forcing Bobbi and Daisy to pick one of them as a friend and in turn condemning the other. It happened and ended. The end.

But with _him_ , with _him_ giving no reasons other than _he_ just didn’t want to be with her anymore, felt like the epitome of bullshit. There has to be something more. She had sacrificed getting her master’s degree, living near her family, _most of her life_ for this _man_ , it felt like. She barely remembers how to function without the daily I-love-yous and see-you-tonights and cutesy little notes and little touches that just made her skin feel electric no matter how tiny those touches were. She feels sick. She feels absolutely robbed of her life, and she’s at the point where starting over feels too impossible for her.

Sharon hates _him_. She hates how much she loves _him_. She hates how _he_ makes her feel every day now. She wants her life back. She wants _him_ back.

* * *

 

Natasha tells her that it’s going to get better, but it’s not going to unless she actively decides it will.

Without even thinking, Sharon punches Natasha in the stomach and instantly regrets it.

She curses _him_ for it. Without _him_ putting her in this weird space that makes her feel like life itself won’t function without _him_ , she wouldn’t be punching one of her best friends, who is looking at her with shock. Like Sharon isn’t Sharon, because Natasha’s friend Sharon would never punch her in the stomach over an offhanded comment like that. And Tony even looks at her like she was feral, and not someone who meant the world to him.

She can’t even find it in herself to apologize. She knows it means nothing. She does say sorry the next morning at breakfast, and all Natasha says is that Sharon hasn’t come down for breakfast since May.

Sharon now realizes it’s nearing November.

* * *

 

Finally, months have passed, and the universe makes it so she and _Steve_ are in the same place at the same time.

And _he_ is holding the hand of a pretty girl, who smiles and shakes her hand because she doesn’t really know who Sharon is, and _he_ looks healthy and happy, while she’s on day three of the same camisole and week two of the jeans she puts on whenever she’s forced to socialize with someone who isn’t Sam, Natasha, or Tony.

 _And he looks healthy and happy_.

It isn’t fair that _he_ gets to move on and find someone else to make _him_ smile and feel human again. It isn’t fair that _he_ ruined her and got to move on feeling great about _himself_.

 _He looks healthy and happy_.

That night, Sharon takes everything _he_ ever bought her and burns it on the grill in the backyard. While it’s burning, Tony and Natasha confront her to have the talk she’d been dreading.

* * *

 

Sharon’s belongings only takes up two suitcases and fives boxes. Neither are that large. She feels pathetic for owning so little. She barely noticed the house changing after she packed her things, since she mostly stayed in the guest room.

Natasha hugs her hard and makes her promise to call, write, and message. There are vague but firm threats attached to them.

Tony hugs her hard and promises that they are just three hours away from her great-aunt’s place, and that he will not hesitate to come to her.

Sam hugs her hard and doesn’t know what to say, because after all these months, she’s the first one he’ll be losing in their group of friends, due to self-exile.

Maria shuts the trunk and insists that they have to leave before rush hour hits. Sharon agrees, but has trouble getting in the car. Doing so makes the decision to move in with her great-aunt definitive. It puts the ending to this chapter of her life, which has been dragged out for another fifty pages that the reader never wanted in the first place. No one likes the story with the unhappy ending.

But Sharon’s life is that story anyway.

* * *

 

Three days after Christmas, Sharon gets a card. _Things will get better if you let them._

She doesn’t know who sent it, or what it implies, exactly. Do they want her to get better, or are they forcing her to decide she needs to get better now instead of later? There’s no signature, no written text, only typed and pasted inside. The envelope labels are also typed out on stickers. This irritates her, because she just wants to know who it came from and what they intended by this.

When her great-aunt is distracted in the kitchen, she tosses the card and envelope into the fireplace. Maybe she’ll get better if they don’t send her letters, whoever it was, and let her find a life that isn’t codependent on her friends forcing her to act like a person. Maybe she won’t get better, and live the rest of her life in depression pitilessly. Maybe she’ll find someone else. Maybe she’ll move on. Maybe some miracle will happen where _he_ asks for her back.

Probably not, but for now, she just wants them to let her be depressed and alone.


End file.
